Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care

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Join us to talk with Angela Tucker about her new book You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race Identity, and Transracial Adoption. Angela is a black woman adopted from foster care to white parents. She was the subject of Closure, a documentary that chronicles her search for her biological parents. Angela has consulted with NBC’s "This Is Us", supported the lead actor of Broadway musical "Jagged Little Pill", has over 15 years of experience working within adoption and foster care agencies, and has mentored over 200 adoptees, leading her to found the Adoptee Mentoring Society.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Adoptee Manifesto
• What adoptee centrism. What do you mean by that?
• The complexities of loving your adoptive parents and wishing you weren’t adopted.
• Why is the spoken or unspoken “you should be grateful” so hard on adopted people?
• How to share the hard parts of our child’s story?
• What is the Ghost Kingdom that adoptees create about their birth family?
• The adoptee as the Plan B child because their parents didn’t get their Plan A child.
• Colin Kaepernick: “Since the day I was born, I've never been anyone’s first choice.”
• What happens when adoptees can’t talk about their feelings of loss and their feelings of longing for their birth families?
• Race:
  • Feeling like a racial fraud.
  • Comfort in white spaces.
  • Color-evasiveness vs. color blindness.
• Susan Harris O’Connor, a biracial person adopted by white parents says that transracial adoptees have 5 dimensions to their racial identity: genetic, imposed, cognitive, visual, and feeling. 
• White privilege by osmosis.
• Have you received flack for marrying a white man? And is this common for transracial adoptees?
• Search:
  • The fear of searching or even talking about birth family because adoptees don’t want to hurt their adoptive parents. And conversely, the fear of some adoptive parents that they will be replaced once their child finds their first parents.
  • Focus on birth mothers over birth fathers.
  • Things adoptive parents should know about the search.
• Red Table Talk –Facebook Watch show with Jada Pinkett Smith, her mother, and her daughter. What were your feelings then and how do you feel about that appearance now.

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Do you sometimes feel like screaming because you can't keep up with all that you think is expected of being a mom? If so, you're in good company. Join us to listen to our interview with Jessica Grose about her book Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood. Grose is an opinion writer at the New York Times. She writes a popular newsletter on parenting and was named by Glamour Magazine as a Game Changer in 2020 for her coverage of parenting during the pandemic.

In this episode, we cover:

• What brought you to write this book?
• The pressure to feel a certain way and do everything right feels inherent in modern motherhood, but is it new? Have things changed? 
• In what areas are moms in America struggling? Expense

Work and Role of Fathers:

• Our society’s views of working motherhood from the 1990’s to now. 
• “There is the expectation for working women to want to become moms. Then when we do become parents, we are expected to be our best at work and attend to our children. I was the first call from the schools instead of my stay-at-home husband. There was a reason we had him stay-at-home. Schools still called "mom" first.”
• “That’s happened to us now that we are both working from home. The other day, they  needed to reach us. Three messages for me & no one called Dad. It wasn’t an emergency, but still.”
• What is “radical flexibility,” and how common is it in the US.
• Are women who were raised by working moms opting for a different path?

 Role of social media:

• “It's frustrating because so often you never see them having to deal with their kids, while trying to meal prep, help with homework, break up a sibling squabble, all the while trying to get out of the house for an appointment. I guess that doesn't make compelling viewing.”
• “So! Many! Opinions! And so much facade. It’s challenging to navigate unless you are seriously self-confident or have already experienced a few ups & downs that give you perspective.
• The curated reels can give such a false viewpoint and it’s easy to assume that’s their real life. But real life is not nearly as compelling as the perfectly crafted short clips.”

Is this a uniquely US issue? 

• Do moms in other countries feel the same pressures to be perfect and do it all?

Unique struggles of foster, adoptive, and kinship parents:

• I was told recently that my feelings about how hard it was to mom my last three (adopted as a sibling set from foster care) were just a part of my “mindset”. Because all the moms she knew had the same struggles. So foster and adoptive moms also have unbelievably unrealistic expectations upon them. We aren’t allowed to struggle differently. Then another person told me that “I signed up for this.” So, the underlying meaning is when you adopt kids from hard places, you aren’t allowed to struggle.
• Had to work hard to get this family.
• Trauma, whether it’s big T trauma or little t trauma is common in our kids, and this impacts any notion of picture-perfect parenting.
• Have had to go through being examined and trained and our homes inspected to even get to be parents.

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of famil

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Are you parenting teens, or will you be in a few years? Don't miss today's conversation with psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, author of the book, "The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents."

In this episode, we cover:

• Our society has become afraid of being unhappy. What are the reasons for this?
• Studies seem to suggest that teens are unhappier now than in the past. Why?
• Three myths about adolescence.
• The adultification of black teens. 
• Why do our teens find us so annoying?
• The goal is not always to avoid conflict with our teens; rather, it should be to learn how to have constructive conflict.
• You say that spending time online can be both good and bad for teens.
• What should parents know about porn?
• How carefully should you supervise what your teens are seeing online?
• How can parents keep technology in place? What are some common-sense rules?
• The importance of small pleasures in modulating the mood of our teens.

Resource:
American Psychological Association: Health advisory on social media use in adolescence

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Join us as Dr. Bruce Perry answers your questions about how trauma impacts adoptive, foster, and kinship kids and families. Dr. Bruce Perry, is a child psychiatrist and neuroscientist, the principal of the Neurosequential Network, Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, and adjunct Professor at Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. He is the author the numerous books including co-author along with Oprah Winfrey of What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, and co-author of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog.

In this episode, we cover:

• The shift in perspective from what’s wrong with you to what happened to you--the ability to understand seemingly senseless behavior by looking at what’s behind it.
• What do you include as “trauma”? How severe does it have to be to impact us later in life?
• We hear foster, adoptive, and kinship parents say, “she was only neglected.” Is neglect less harmful than abuse?
• When siblings are separated in foster care and parents are taken completely away from seeing the children for a year at a time does this lack of contact count as trauma and how does this type of no-touch abuse effect the child's brain? 
• How common is trauma? ACE study.
• Does trauma at a young age have longer lasting impacts? 
• We have a child who is chronologically 3yrs, who had a non-accidental TBI at 3 months of age. He is a sweet boy but prone to rages and is very loud.  Could this be from the trauma or is it his age and frustration? 
• How can parents help their child manage trauma if they don’t know what the trauma was?
• The times of healing are often very short but very powerful.  And that the more times our kids experience healing, even in short bursts, the more their brain "re-develops" in healthier ways.
• Is there is an association between trauma and sensory processing and if so, do we know why?
• How do you become “unstuck” on being a victim?  My daughter is 18 and is struggling to become an adult, but constantly feels and acts as though she is still a victim from her past. 
• Can you discuss how trauma is related to the sabotage of relationships, family events, life events, and opportunities?
• Prenatal trauma—
  • in utero exposure to alcohol or drugs
  • maternal stress
• Can generational trauma be passed down genetically through the various forms of DNA? 
• Resilience and Healing: My question is coming from the perspective as an adoptive and foster mom of some kids who have some pretty big behaviors. Can we really grow these kids and help them live happy, well-adjusted lives?  Not problem free, but a life where after many years of love, they will come to find peace within themselves?   
• I have two children who are currently in foster care because their father was abusive and I stayed with him and allowed my children to witness the abuse. Is there any way to reverse the trauma?

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodca

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review 

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Are you thinking about adopting from foster care or adopting a child you are already fostering? Are you wondering how to help the child transition to adoption? Our guests are Hope Middlebrook, a foster parent recruiter for Arrow Child and Family Services, and Jennifer O’Brien, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Regional Director for Arrow’s Foster Care Programs.

In this episode, we cover:

• Two different scenarios: 
  • You are the foster parents of the child you are going to adopt.
  • You are adopting a child who is living with another foster family.
• At what age do kids understand the concept of adoption and what it means in their life?
• If you are adopting a child you are fostering.
  • How is adoption different from fostering?
  • What are some typical emotions (positive and negative) a child might feel? Grief is to be expected.
  • How far in advance should the child be informed?
  • What are some typical behaviors you might see?
  • What are some typical emotions and behaviors you might see from other children already living in your home?
• If you are adopting a child living with another resource family or group home.
  • What are some typical emotions (positive and negative) a child might feel?  Grief is to be expected.
  • How far in advance should the child be informed?
  • How long should the process take?
  • What can the adults do to make the process less stressful for the child? 
  • What are some typical behaviors you might see from a child that is moving to yet another home and another parent?
  • What are some typical emotions and behaviors you might see from other children already living in your home?
• What are the pros and cons of changing the child’s name? First name? Last name?
• What are some tips for parents to help their child transition from foster child to adopted child? Some of these will apply to a child you are fostering and some to a child whom you are not fostering.
  • Get all the information on the child available from his file, caseworker, and previous foster parents.
  • Decide what type of relationship you can have with your child’s birth family. Come up with ways to help your child maintain safe connections to their biological roots.
  • Work with the former foster family and the child or youth to determine what type of relationship can continue with the foster family after the child moves to your home.
  • Go slow. Ideally, visit the child first in their foster home, then take the child out for the day, then have the child spend the night with the adoptive family, then the weekend before they finally move in.
  • Give the child/youth as much voice in the process as possible.
  • Anticipate problems and come up in advance with ways to work through them and outside resources to use.
  • Create a Lifebook for your child and use this book to help explain some of the differences between foster care and adoption. Get pictures from the foster family and the caseworker.
  • Prepare children already in the home for an adjustment period and how kids who have experienced trauma might behave.
  • Think about how you will maintain a tie to their cultural, racial, or ethnic roots.
  • Identify support for yourself. You will, at some point, likely feel discouraged, frustrated, and maybe even regretful. Where will you turn for support?
  • Rite of passage at finalization.
• What to do if the tween or teen does not want to be adopted? 
  • How to explore the youth’s reasons?
  • Allow space to change their mind.
  • What other options are available outside of adoption? 

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foste

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Is your child more intense and more challenging than other kids? Do you worry about the future for this child and your ability to help them learn to behave? You will love this interview with Tina Feigal, M.S., Ed., the Director of Family Engagement at Anu Family Services and founder of the Center for the Challenging Child, where she works with families throughout the US. She is the author of the book Present Moment Parenting: The Guide to a Peaceful Life with Your Intense Child.

In this episode, we cover:

• What makes some kids more challenging?
• What is the impact of trauma on children’s behavior?
• We often parent the way we were parented. How can we overcome this?
• What do we mean by “attachment,” and why is it important for children and parents?
• “Parent the child in front of you in the present moment"- not the one that did ____ yesterday or the one that you fear will do or be ____ in the future.”
• Ten Tenets of Parenting
• How can parents work with children to improve these behaviors with different aged children while maintaining attachment?
  • Frequent and intense tantrums 
  • Inflexible
  • Can’t accept the word “no”
  • Lying
  • Stealing

Watch Tina’s TEDx Talk: How to Stop Kids’ Meltdowns and Gain Their Cooperation.

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Are you parenting a child on the autism spectrum. This interview will give you insight and hope. We talk with Dr. Lynn Koegel, a clinical professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and author of Hidden Brilliance: Unlocking the Intelligence of Autism. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

In this episode, we cover:

• What are some of the variations in the way autism presents in humans?
• What are some of the symptoms or signs of autism at different ages? 
• We so often focus on the weaknesses of children with autism and overlook their strengths. Why is this a problem for children on the autism spectrum?
• How is autism diagnosed, and what are the limits to this testing?
• What can parents do to make sure that the testing more clearly reflects their child’s strengths as well as weaknesses?
• The absence of speaking starting at around age one and struggles with communicating are common with people with autism. What can parents do to help improve spoken language?
• How to teach social connectedness? 
• The inability to express their needs verbally can lead to behavioral issues such as screaming, aggression, and tantrums. What works to help the child and improve these behaviors? 
  • The first question is what the behavior is trying to communicate.
  • Teach replacement behaviors. How do you find and teach this?
  • Environmental manipulation. Change what you can.
  • Priming
  • Self-management
• Working with the school
• Prognosis
• Causes of autism

Resource:
Hidden Brilliance: Unlocking the Intelligence of Autism

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Have you thought about adopting a child of a different race or ethnicity? Are you up for the job? How can you be the best family for this child? Join us when we talk with Meggin Nam Holtz, a Licensed Master Social Worker, and a Korean adoptee. She has a private counseling practice specializing in adoption.  She created an award-winning documentary film, Found in Korea, about birth search, country of origin travel, identity, and adoption.

In this episode, we cover:

• If you are a White parent, are there different issues you need to consider depending on the race of the child you adopt?
• Some families prefer to adopt a bi-racial child rather than a child who is all Black or all Latinx. What are the issues to consider?
• Is there a difference between transracial and transcultural adoption?
• What does it take to raise a child to have a healthy self and racial identity. How do they differ?
• What are some of the issues parents should think about to determine if they are a family that should adopt across racial or ethnic lines?
• What should parents be prepared to do in order to help their children develop a healthy sense of self?
• Adoption is a family affair, so how should prospective adoptive parents prepare their extended family members for the adoption of a child of a different race or culture?
• How to find role models that racially mirror your child?
• Research on how transracially adopted children are doing.
• What to do if you have someone in your family that you fear will not be accepting or will not treat your child fairly?
• What are some issues that may come up with open adoption when adopting across racial lines?
• Preparation for transracial adoption goes beyond hair care; hair and skin care are important. What should parents know? 

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Does your child struggle with controlling their big emotions? Do they seem angry or frustrated most of the time? We've got some answers! Join us to listen to this interview with Dr. Stuart Shanker, a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Psychology at York University and author of several books, including Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Reframed: Self-Reg for a Just Society. He is also an adoptive dad.

In this episode, we cover:

• 3 basic principles of self-regulation:
  • There is no such thing as a bad or lazy kid. 
    • No matter how difficult, out of control, distracted, or exhausted a child might seem, there’s a way forward: self-regulation.
  • All people can learn to self-regulate in ways that promote rather than constrict growth.
  • There is no such thing as a "fixed outcome": trajectories can always be changed, at any point in the lifespan, if only we have the right knowledge and tools.
• How can parents help their children become calmer when we live in a stressful, frantic, and over-stimulating world? 
• How can parents calm themselves down in the hectic world?
• Five-step method for managing stress
  • 1. Reframe behavior by learning the difference between misbehavior and stress behavior and the signs of each. (Why and why now?)
  • 2. Recognize stressors. 
    • Some typical stressors broken out by age.
    • Some “hidden stressors” that their children are struggling with - physiological as well as social and emotional. 
  • 3. Reduce stress (deep breathing (pizza breath), exercise, touch, music, pets)
  • 4. Reflect on what it feels like to be calm and what it feels like to be overstressed. 
  • 5. Restoration- energy, balance, and relationship. 
• These steps are not a program for managing a child’s behavior. Rather, these are five steps to promote understanding a child’s behavior.

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Do you wonder how to talk to your child about adoption? What if they don't seem interested? How do you talk about some of the hard stuff? This episode explores talking with children about adoption at different ages with Mari Itzkowitz, with the Center for Adoption Support and Education (CASE). She is an adoption-competent therapist and leader of the CASE Training Team, providing training and education to professionals and parents.

In this episode, we cover:

• How does an adoptee’s understanding of adoption differ by age?  
  • Infants
  • Toddlers & Preschoolers 
  • School Age 
  • Tweens 
  • Teens 
  • Young Adults 
  • Older Adults 
• How to talk about adoption at different ages? 
• Should you wait for the child to ask questions before you tell them about their adoption story?
• What if your child or youth shows little or no interest in their adoption story?
• How does openness or lack of openness impact a child’s understanding of adoption? 
• Should adoptive parents bring up the idea of searching for birth family?
• How does transracial adoption impact a child’s understanding of adoption? 
• Our focus is often on birth mothers. How can you talk about adoption and the role of the birth father with young children who do not understand the concept of sex? 
• What to say when you know very little about the birth parents?  How to handle hard birth parent stories? Should you tell a child that they were conceived by rape or that their birth mother is in jail or birth father suffers from addiction? At what age should you share this information? 

Additional Resources:

• Resources on Talking about Adoption
• Building the Framework for Adopted & Foster Children to Process the Hard Parts of Their Stories
• Suggested books on talking with kids about birthparents

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building